Science: Saucer Diehards

For two decades, the U.S. Air Force kept tab on unidentified flying
objects in a project called Blue Book. Then, in 1969, the number of
UFOs reported in U.S. skies sharply dwindled, and the Blue Book was
closed. Why did the UFOs suddenly become scarce?

Saucer skeptics have a number of theories. For one thing, an intensive
Air Force-sponsored study of UFO "sightings," conducted under the
supervision of University of Colorado Physicist Edward U. Condon, was
issued in 1969.

It provided plausible explanations for almost all the reports; they were
apparently based on optical illusions, stars, weather inversions and
even satellites. Furthermore, man's...